We request funds to help support a 1989 FASEB Summer Research Conference on The Biology and Chemistry of Vision. The meeting will be held June 25 - 30, 1989 at the Vermont Academy, Saxtons River, Vermont. The goal of the meeting is threefold: 1) to summarize current progress and develop new attacks in research on molecular mechanisms of vision, 2) to attract and orient new investigators to the field, 3) to relate new molecular findings to the pathogenesis and treatment of blinding retinal disease. The FASEB meeting format, like that of Gordon conferences, is unusually conducive to fruitful discussion. The meeting will be small (about 165 participants) and will be held in the isolated environment of rural Vermont. Time will be available for in-depth discussions of a kind that are rare at larger meetings. The conference will be interdisciplinary, and will involve molecular biologists, cell biologists, biophysicists, clinicians, biochemists, and electrophysiologists. The theme of the meeting will be Molecular Mechanisms of Vision. Nine morning and evening sessions will focus on visual pigments, chemistry and molecular physiology of the light activated enzyme systems and ion transport proteins of photoreceptor cells, the cell biology of photoreceptors, molecular mechanisms of hereditary retinal degenerations, retinal synapses, and phototransduction in invertebrates. Afternoon poster sessions will enable all participants to present and discuss their current work. A special keynote address that relates basic science to an important clinical problem will be given by a distinguished clinician-scientist. This talk, together with the session on retinal degenerations, should lead to new and productive interactions between basic scientists and clinicians.